Murat Karayılan

Murat Karayılan
Born	1954 (age 62–63) Birecik, Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Allegiance	Kurdistan Workers' Party
Battles/wars	Turkey–PKK conflict

Murat Karayılan (born 1954), also nicknamed Cemal, is one of the co-founders of the Kurdistan Workers Party. He has been the organization PKK's acting leader since its original founder and leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was captured in 1999 by Turkish intelligence agents. On 2014, he left the PKK leader position and was assigned as the new commander-in-chief of the PKK's armed wing, the People's Defence Forces.

Born in Birecik, Şanlıurfa, Karayılan finished his studies at a vocational college of machinery and joined the organization PKK in 1979. He was active in his native province of Şanlıurfa until he fled to Syria at the time of the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. He has called on Kurds to stop serving in the military of Turkey, stop paying taxes and stop using the Turkish language.

On October 14, 2009, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated senior leaders of the organisation PKK as significant foreign narcotics traffickers: Murat Karayılan, the head of the PKK, and high-ranking members Ali Rıza Altun and Zübeyir Aydar. Pursuant to the Kingpin Act, the designation freezes any assets the three designees may have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits U.S. persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions with these individuals. As of 2011, Karayılan has still the same designation.

The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution the same year stated that it has no evidence that the organisational structures of the PKK are directly involved in drug trafficking in Germany.

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